


Familiar Anger

by Thatkindoffangirl



Series: Metal Gear Solid POV challenge [4]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M, Panic Attacks, blood mention, death mention, sex mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 23:42:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1836460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkindoffangirl/pseuds/Thatkindoffangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He doesn’t know what triggers it. Maybe the sudden drop in adrenaline as the soldier plummets the ground, maybe the blood squirting from him, drops swaying in midair before landing on both his and John’s faces. Maybe that — for the first time in his life — he has been not just about, but also afraid to die. And he hates it."<br/>---</p>
<p>Written for the POV challenge. Prompt is Bosselot/sex after battle/Ocelot's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Familiar Anger

He doesn’t know what triggers it. Maybe the sudden drop in adrenaline as the soldier plummets the ground, maybe the blood squirting from him, drops swaying in midair before landing on both his and John’s faces. Maybe that — for the first time in his life — he has been not just about, but also  _afraid_  to die. And he hates it.

He doesn’t know what triggers it, but his stomach falls before his legs even begin to collapse. He hits the ground as John is holstering back his knife. “Reloading isn’t as exhilarating in close combat, huh?” he asks, and the sound echoes inside Ocelot like voices bouncing off the walls of a cave —  he is as empty. His lips tingle with the urge to spew out the snarky remark he knows he has, but he just mouths words he doesn’t understand. His mind is blank, his vision dark and his hands cover his ears on their own to drown out the screaming.

“That was the last one,” John tells him, and Ocelot feels rage climbing up from the bottom of his stomach.  _Does he think he’s scared?_  He grinds his teeth. The idea is ludicrous and — for the first time in his life — true. He is afraid to die now, and John, kneeling next to him, a reassuring hand resting on his shoulder, is the reason — a reason he doesn’t like, a reason his mind is pushing to elaborate and reject at the same time, to shove deep down within himself, bury it where he can lock it away and never deal with it again. John’s hands cup his cheeks, and his mouth aches with the desire to bite them off.

“Just open your eyes, see that nothing’s happened,” John says, and Ocelot doesn’t want to. He barely remembers he has eyes, even less that they are closed. He takes a deep breath and he smells blood, all around them, blood on his face, blood on John’s hands.  _Blood is good_ , he thinks. He knows blood, and war, and death and he is not afraid of them. He is not afraid of what he knows, he is afraid of what he doesn’t  _want_ to — “Open your eyes,” John says again and this time he obliges.

As his vision adjusts, he finds John’s face staring at him among the light of the fire they had lit before the ambush. His eyebrows are scrunched, his lips thinned. It’s a worried expression that doesn’t suit him at all, and Ocelot would laugh if he could. Instead he nods back to a question that hasn’t been asked but that John must have thought, for the tension in his hands dissolves and his face relaxes. And then he smiles, and Ocelot’s anger rises again — this time, however, it’s good. This time he knows it.

He’s let emotions overcome him, let John see him once more as a scared, incompetent child; he has — the thought surfaces before he can even stop it — allowed John to crawl inside him, make him afraid to hurt someone in the way that he had never considered he could hurt people in — not by betraying them, not by abandoning them, but simply by not being there to do any of those things.

When he kisses John, he tells himself it’s out of spite, that he’s asserting his dominance and indifference. It’s not until John’s hands are crawling inside his pants, his fingers teasing the soft skin at the base of his erection, that he realizes John thought of it as a thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> As this is part of a challenge to improve my writing abilities, comments are encouraged :)


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